Rifat Chadirji

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Rifat Chadirji (2013)

Rifat Chadirji ( Arabic رفعت الجادرجي, DMG Rifʿat al-Ḫādirǧī ; * December 6, 1926 in Baghdad , British Mandate Mesopotamia ; † April 10, 2020 in London ) was an Iraqi architect . With his buildings and projects, he was considered the most influential architect and "father of modern architecture" in Iraq.

Life

Rifat Chadirji came from an influential family in Iraq; his father, Kamil al-Chaderchi , founded and became president of the National Democratic Party in Iraq.

He studied at the Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts in London and graduated in architecture in 1952. Between the 1950s and 1970s, Rifat Chadirji was considered an important cultural figure. From 1952 to 1978, with his Iraq Consult IQC office, he was responsible for the construction and projects of more than 100 buildings throughout Iraq, including the headquarters of the tobacco monopoly and the central post office in Baghdad. His most important work was the memorial to the Unknown Soldier on Firdaus Square in Baghdad, which was later replaced by a statue of Saddam Hussein , which in turn was destroyed by the US armed forces in 2003. Chadirji was an opponent of the Ba'ath regime and was imprisoned in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's rule for his political views. He left Iraq in 1983 for a professorship (Loeb fellow) at Harvard University ; From 1986 to 1992 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and at the Bartlett School Architecture and Planning at University College London (1989). He ran an office in the Lebanese coastal town of Halat and supported Lebanese architecture students with the Chadirji Foundation .

In addition to the architecture, he was known as a photographer who documented Iraqi life on a large scale with more than 100,000 pictures.

He has received several awards and honors. In 1986 he won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for his life's work . In 1982 and 1987 he received honorary membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the American Institute of Architects . In 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Coventry University . He is the namesake of the architecture prize "The Rifat Chadirji Prize".

Chadirji died in April 2020 at the age of 93 during the COVID-19 pandemic in London of complications from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Both the Prime Minister-designate of Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and the Iraqi President Barham Salih condoled on his death.

Fonts

Arabic language

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  • Portrait of a Father , 1985
  • Taha Street and Hammersmith , 1985
  • Eight Etchings of Photographs by Kamil Chadirji , 1985
  • The Ukhaidir and the Crystal Palace , 1991
  • Dialogue on the Structure of Art and Architecture , 1995
  • The seating status in Arif Agha's househould, an anthropological study of the relationship between the formation of identity and seating artifacts , 2001
  • Introduction for The Biography of Kamil Chadirji and the History of the National Democratic Party , 2002
  • A wall between two darkness , 2003
  • Introduction for the book of Ahali Newspaper Editorials , 2003
  • The Characteristics of Beauty in Man's Consciousness , 2013
  • The role of the architect in the development of human civilization. , 2014

English language

  • A Collection of Twelve Etchings , 1985
  • Eight Etchings of Photographs by Kamil Chadirji , 1985
  • Concepts and Influences , 1986
  • The Photography of Kamil Chadirji - Social Life in the Middle East 1920–1940 , 1991
  • Dialectics Causality of Architecture , 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Taylor Heyman: "Prominent Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji dies in London aged 93". In: thenational.ae. April 11, 2020, accessed on April 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Rifat Chadirji. In: rifatchadirji.com. April 11, 2020, accessed on April 11, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji dies of COVID-19. In: middle-east-online.com. April 11, 2020, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Publications taken with English titles from The Rifat Chadirji Prize
personal data
SURNAME Chadirji, Rifat
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iraqi architect
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Baghdad , British Mandate Mesopotamia
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2020
Place of death London